


The Shattering

by Music_Feeds_My_Soul



Series: Pirates of Alberta in Thedas [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I will not show this to my family, Mention of torture, Modern Character in Thedas, because I am awful to everyone, force drug usage, mental breakdowns, mention of drug usage, what happens when a bunch of people are forced to see all the bad in the world, why do we do pirare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-26 03:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Music_Feeds_My_Soul/pseuds/Music_Feeds_My_Soul
Summary: We didn’t start out as pirates, as people who killed and pillaged and ran illegal drugs. But we ended up like that anyway.We all just shattered.





	1. Dad

 My dad first hurt his eye when he was cleaning our boat. He’d been foolish enough to try and get some cleaning chemical on a rage, laying underneath the boat and got it in his eye. He nearly went blind in his eye.

 It terrified us, but he pulled through despite the fact his eye never worked the same. Later he had his hip replaced and walked with a slight limp. I never thought that these could be too dangerous. I never really thought about it all after we ended up in Thedas.

 I was the only one able to speak Trade thanks to the necklace my friend had made- something that made me wonder about the wish she made me make when I held the necklace for the first time. It made me wonder a lot.

 I was the one to haggle, and it was hard. Apparently, English was the language of Tevinter and almost everyone hated us on sight. But I managed to get some jobs sailing for us and we got to work. It was a merchant ship we worked on, and I was useful for speaking with Tevinter merchants.

 Dad took to sailing with ease, and the hard work came naturally to him thanks to his years as a rancher. Mom soon followed, along with Sam, my older brother’s girlfriend. My siblings and I struggled a bit more but we soon found ourselves adjusting. It was good work.

 And then Leo, my youngest brother, set something on fire with magic.

 We booked it off the ship, my cautions about Thedas and mages and Templars what spurned us. We ran as fast as we could and managed to slip the Templars sent after us.

 Leo struggled with his magic while we searched for more jobs. Calum, my older brother, suggested farming and we tried but we found ourselves hard pressed.

 Dad said it was probably because we had been cattle ranchers before we moved to town and farming was something very different.

 We ended up going back to sailing after a while, this time we decided to try to get our own ship.

 Mom had picked up slight of hand and was working on cheating at a game where a ship had been wagered when Sam accidentally froze a bar counter. No one noticed but me. We won the ship and set out.

 Leo and Sam trained in secret and I managed to find a hint of a mage rebellion I contacted to get staffs from for them. Calum snuck off from time to time when we made port, usually coming back with some sword skills. I learned how to use daggers with trial and error. Mom picked up a bow and Dad loved his swords.

 Calum suggested we make guns but I cautioned against it, my mind turning to the Qunari. There had been a character in a DLC who nearly figured out Gaatlock that mysteriously vanished, and I worried over being the next few.

 We worked as transport. We transported goods and people occasionally. It was good honest work.

 And then we got tapped to transport something I had no idea what it was. I made discreet inquiries at a tavern before we left and found out we were transporting the Thedas equivalent of LSD. My blood boiled. I hated drugs. I had been going to school for justice studies and I knew how bad drugs could be. I hated transporting it but knew that we risked some backlash if we mysteriously lost the cargo. So I tampered with it instead, full of morals and self-righteousness.

 The buyer thought it was the supplier’s fault but the supplier knew it was us. They attacked the ship and… well, we had to fight back.

Dad was the slowest thanks to his limp and eye. They spotted it and then… then…

 They caught him and made us watch them rip out his eye.

 I don’t remember much after that. Leo lost control, his magic going haywire and it ripped through everything and blinded us.

 I just remember trying to stem the bleeding.

 I never told my family why they attacked us. I kept it close to my chest, guilt, and disgust in my stomach for myself as my dad struggled to deal with having one eye, with having to always be aware of everything.

 We all changed after that. We were more wary, a little more angry, a little more vicious.

 Dad stopped making as many jokes. He started being short with everyone.

 And I? I learned morals meant shit.

 


	2. Little Brother

Leo and I had both been diagnosed autistic at the same time. I was much older then him and generally was termed higher functioning. I wondered if this was because I was actually higher functioning or if it was because I had been thrown into the deep end from childhood on and told to swim.

 Therefore, I was a bit jealous everyone was more understanding of Leo, that I was told that I couldn’t use my autism as an excuse when he could do whatever he wanted. Or well, my brain said so. Sometimes things got mixed up for me.

 I got even more jealous when he had magic. It wasn’t fair, why did he have it and not me? I was so angry about it I pouted for weeks.

 After Dad though… things began to change. He started having nightmares. We’d known he had vivid dreams- he spoke of them often and he compared notes on Spirits with Sam often enough, though he had more vivid dreams. I hesitantly called him a Dreamer and tried to find some more info on it, but didn’t really consider the bad side to it.

 The demons.

 They attacked him in his sleep, hissing at him and offering him everything. I told him not to listen, cautioning him. Sam did to- having done some odds jobs for the mages rebellion as she learned Trade though I was still the only one fluent even with a stupid accent- with stories she had heard.

 He confided in me the demons offered him a way home, back to video games and relaxation and I got furious.

 “We can’t go home you fucking moron. We can’t, we’re stuck here and we all miss shit yes, but at least our dreams about it don’t nearly kill us!” I was angry and upset and scared and I hated myself for yelling.

 Mom told me off and I would never forget her disappointed face.

 Liam kept quiet about his dreams after that, though they were still bad.

 I was walking by his room one day when I heard him talking in his sleep, nearly accepting a deal.

 I kept some magebane handy in case we ever ran into any enemy mages.

 I just never thought I’d be pouring it down my baby brother’s throat to keep him from killing us.

 No one understood why, except Sam, why I did it. Until we ran into a slaver ship that we had to fight off.

 One of their mages turned and we were forced to fight. Dad’s limp got worse, Calum nearly lost his arm and I ended up with some nasty scars.

 Leo had another nightmare he nearly gave into and it was Mom who shoved the magebane down his throat.

 Leo slowly began reaching for it himself and we didn’t think much until Sam pulled me aside.

  “It’s addictive. They all agreed, it can be seriously mentally damaging. It’s like alcohol kinda.”

 I tried to take it away, to wean him off but…

 Well, having to shove it down his throat for a week straight made us all stop it.

 My little brother became an addict and we couldn’t change it.

 It was all my fault to. I shouldn’t have reamed him out, made him think that he shouldn’t share his sorrows with us.

 It was all my damn fault.

 Dad started drinking more and I ended up picking it up to. I hated the taste but seeing Leo, his dopy smile and half-lidded eyes…

 Well I needed to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magebane as being a drug makes sense to me in that it does impact the ability to use the Fade which can be destroyed by Tranquilizing them. So... magebane is a drug here.


	3. Mom

 My mother had been a personal trainer who owned a gym before she was forced to stop, the gym costing to much. It bled over into her personal life and she was a health nut. I mostly tuned her out when I left on my own, finally free of her gross health food.

 Being tossed into Thedas meant I had to put up with it, in a different way. Half of the stuff- coconut oil, flax seeds and whatnot- weren’t around and Mom freaked at the idea that this was her new reality. But she recovered and even figured out how to make health food from what we had.

 She was the most adaptable of us, and the one in the best shape so she adapted quick to Thedas and was happy.

 Then Dad. Then Leo.

 She was still… happy but sad to. A little bitter, but she kept on going, kept on fighting.

 She was also probably the most merciful of us. I had played the games to many times to not know people could and would stab you in the back, while my Dad was just to angry. Calum and Sam and Leo just followed my lead. We showed mercy but not to the extent Mom did.

 We were attacked by a pirate ship about a month after Leo became addicted to magebane. They had children fighting for them and Mom was merciful to one.

 I had to cut her in two after she stabbed my mother in the back right where her spine was.

 Mom had to kill another when Dad was distracted.

 Sam had contacts in the Mage Rebellion that lead us to a healer who patched us up in return for smuggling some mages to Tevinter.

 Mom though… she was told she would be lucky to ever walk without crutches.

 We all stopped being merciful after that.


	4. Big Brother

 Calum and I were opposites before. I was law, he was anti-government and a pothead. We argued and fought and I had lingering trauma from his bullying as a teenager.

 But we loved each other, dearly. Which is why we leaned on each other the most. We used to trash talk our parents together.

 So we began trash talking Thedas. We got drunk or Calum would sneak some of the Thedas version of weed, though I didn’t use it, and we would talk.

 We sword and bickered but we both felt it worked out enough.

 Dad, Leo, Mom… after them we got angrier, more bitter and harsher. We swore, cursed and hollered our anger. We started going to taverns to start fights, to beat someone bloody.

 It was there that Calum broke. We got into a fight with a group of mercenaries and we’d been having the best time, both drunk and happy when Calum shoved one merc. Said merc fell and with a snap, his neck broke.

 We’d killed before. We had our breakdowns over it, had our screams and nightmares.

 But this was the first time we killed by accident. By a stupid fight we started.

 Calum stared at the body in shock while the other mercs began screaming at us. I had to drag Calum out, fighting off the others and booking it back to the docks. We set sail that night- luckily with our cargo.

 “You alright?” I asked Calum. He didn’t answer. I put it behind me and went on with work, offering him a shoulder but he never liked talking about his feelings.

 Until our next bitch session.

 “I liked it.” Calum voiced. “I liked killing him, I liked the power it gave me and I kinda wanna do it again.” He looked up with hollow eyes. “I just want to be in control of my life again.”

 After that, he took more relish in fighting, in killing. I still went to bar fights with him but this time it was to pull him off a target. When he was sober, he regretted and hated himself so he drank. When he was drunk he didn’t care.

 My brother was a killer and didn’t care.

 

 


	5. Brother's Girlfriend

I never had much of an opinion on the Qunari back on Earth. Sure, I thought their actions with mages were disgusting and the idea of forced reintegration into the Qun was disturbing on extreme levels, but I didn’t have an opinion. If anything, I admired the detail about the Qunari and liked how, much like the Dwarves, they were more technologically advanced then the other races because of the fact they did not rely on magic as much. I was a writer, I liked that stuff.

 Ending on Thedas, my thoughts on the Qunari were on the back burner while I tried to keep my family from dying.

 After Dad, after Leo, after Mom, after Calum… it all went way to the back burner. Until we found ourselves handling more… unsavory cargo. We started hanging around less reputable taverns.

I met a Ben-Hassrath agent, one I only knew was Ben-Hassrath due to the Qunari symbol on his sleeve, a subtle claim of allegiance. I ignored it. I didn’t care enough and thought him harmless. We were just sailors after all.

 I was wrong.

 Ben-Hassrath don’t fear magic like the rest of the Qun. It is a tool to them and they go after any mage they can, to convert them. Leo was so drugged up on magebane that his power wasn’t noticeable.

 Sam’s was though.

 The agent and a group of his fellows ambushed Sam and kidnapped her. We spotted them taking off with her and we gave chase. We chased and chased for months.

 We did a lot of things. Dad and Calum tag teamed interrogated, Mom shot down so many agents, Leo actually cut back to burn them alive and I slaughtered.

 When we found them, they were trying to convert her with their reprogramming. They had already started some of the collaring.

 Her tongue was cut out.

 We snapped and brutally killed them. Calum tortured the main agent, I went for gut slashes, Leo slammed walking bombs on them, Dad pinned one to the wall and Mom used him as living target practice.

 And then we got Sam free and she flash fried them.

 Sam started working on her fire skills and we made a point to attack any Qunari ship with extreme prejudice.

 I had a greater way of punishment though.

 


	6. Me

 I don’t know when I shattered into pieces. Maybe it was because it was my fault dad lost his eye, maybe it was because I was the one to yell at Leo, maybe it was because Mom didn’t smile much anymore, maybe because it was my fault that Calum learned to love killing with me encouraging the bar fights, maybe it was because it was my fucking fault that I didn’t think that a Ben-Hassrath agent was noteworthy enough to report, to care about and it cost Sam her tongue.

 It was all my fucking fault and I couldn’t stand it.

 So I snapped, I shattered. I had taken a gun safety course and some firearm training so I drew out how a gun was supposed to work and paid a dwarf to make it. I had them make bullet molds and bullets.

 And I got Calum to teach me how to make gunpowder.

 Dad liked his swords, Mom preferred her bow, Calum liked getting up close and personal. Leo and Sam had magic.

 And I wouldn’t let them anyway. I would be the target for the Qunari, to shove it in their faces that a bas had the same skills as them, even better given I miniaturized them into guns.

 We were branded as pirates after the fifth time we attacked a Qunari ship and I used my guns. We were called pirates when we attacked a Ferelden trading ship because Calum was twitchy and we were itching for a fight.

 We were called pirates for stealing the gaatlock powder and not giving it to any country.

 I just shrugged.

 So we were pirates.

 Big deal.


End file.
